Note: Did you read an introduction post to this guide? Make sure you do so if not, to get the bigger picture! 🙂
First of all and the most important to note:
If you want your content to be optimised for Search Engines – write for Human Beings!
You should write for people first and search engines second. This means that you should be focused more on creating good quality content that will engage your website’s visitors. Be assured that when you do so – search engines will recognise your efforts.
The extra bonus of good quality content is that readers will share your work generating additional backlinks, not to mention extra traffic, and search engines will value your quality work because it will simply read well without too many enforced keywords all over the place!
Long gone are the times, when keyword stuffing was the way to go – overused phrases you want to rank for not only make the content hard to read for a visitor but also make it look like a spam or babbling for search engines! And they don’t like it just as much as a human reader wouldn’t!
You still want keywords in your content, but only as much as it’s needed for search engines to pick it up.
So remember – these days when you’re writing your content for humans, you are optimising it for search engines (more or less) same time! Now, more to the details:
Write your content with searchers in mind
So yeah, you’ve got this great product or this valuable message that you want to share with everyone… but what’s good in it for everyone else than yourself if no one can find out about it?! Spend a little bit of time while writing your content to think about what is it that you would like this page or post to be found on search engines. Ask yourself what would potential visitor be searching for to be able to find your website?
Determine what would be this term or phrase someone could use to find your content and use it more than once when you write to convince search engines that ‘yes, this page is about this – rank it higher please so people can find it!’. Remember to not over use it, so it doesn’t start to look like a spam with no value!
Valuable content comes first
I will never have enough reminding you about this basic rule… no matter how pretty your website design is and how well structured it is from coding point of view, if your content is badly written and if the content that you really want to rank for is not positioned on top of the page or post – it will ruin all the expected effects and benefits!
Most of the time search engines don’t bother going through the page further than 1/3 part of it! So, remember – what you have wrote in first few lined of your page is what search engines will consider when deciding on how to classify your content.
Use your target keywords in titles, links and meta descriptions
Search engines base their evaluation of your content by combining all the information they can find in it, in a very short time they do so, so the most important parts of your content will be it’s title, meta description (short description of page content that people see when using search engine to find what they’re looking for) and the first 1/3 part of the content on a page. Make sure all of these areas contain your target keyword in them. Remember to not overuse!
Clarification about meta descriptions – by default WordPress simply picks up an excerpt from first few lines on the page and uses it to tell search engines to display it as an information about the content of page within the search results – so again, it just shows how important it is to have your most valuable information about content of your page or post in those mentioned first few sentences!
Now, wait… what if it’s not always possible to get the message right for meta description and keep it read well in the content same time!? No worries! There are plenty of tools available for you to tweak it the way you need it.
They come in form of plugins to your WordPress CMS.
Some of them are paid for, other available free of charge… but you shouldn’t worry about the choices available for you anyway, since every self-respecting Digital Marketing Agency would provide those tools for you bundled with your new Website Design, with included explanation on how to use them!
Always add alt attributes to images and titles to links
As I mentioned in an introduction post to this simple guide – search engines do not ‘see’ your content, they can only ‘read it’. You need to remember that as much as average human visitor to your website will be able to notice straight away what’s on the image and how it connects with your content, without an alt attribute search engines or visitors that use a screen reader, are unable to tell what is it.
Similarly, title attribute for links adds an extra information about them. Search engines are not always able to tell by reading an URL from the link, what will be the content of the page you are linking to. By providing them with that extra bit of information you are making their job easier. Don’t we all like to have our job easier?!
Basically – thanks to that simple rule something that would bring no value otherwise or count as a useless piece of code, becomes a strong SEO value for your content! If your website design agency forgot to tell you know how to add alt tags and titles to your content, make sure to remind them to do so!
Use categories and tags for your posts
Categorising and tagging your posts offer an additional opportunity to increase traffic to your website via search engines. They can assist in navigation of related topics, and can help search engines in better understanding the relevance of your site to specific topics that people are searching for.
Shortly describing – search engines (visitors as well) treat categories like the table of contents for your blog and tags like they would represent the index. If used right, it can strengthen the message you are trying to send out. It makes it easy for search engines to evaluate your content the way they should and the way you want them to.
As a precaution – don’t overuse this opportunity! It’s a great way to optimise your content but you must find a good balance between offering as few options as possible, while same time giving the search engine or reader a choice that they will be satisfied with.
Furthermore, you must always remember that each and every piece of content on your site should have a useful purpose. You shouldn’t tag a post for the sake of tagging it – you should do so because grouping posts by that particular tag could be of use to a search engine or reader.
Interlink your related content
In connection with the above, search engines crawl your website design moving from page to page and the easiest way from to do so if by following any links within the content. When you interlink your related articles or pages you’re not only making it more convenient for search engines but you also are sending a strong message to them – ‘all this content is related to the topic, all this content consist a lot of valuable information for visitors about this topic’.
Of course you need to remember that search engines will check if that’s true! If it is – they will appreciate your hard work by ranking your content higher in search results! Generally speaking, the more you interlink your related content, the more engaged search engines and your readers will be. Great opportunity to keep them both on your site longer!
Search Engine Optimisation Guide Summary
Even if your website design is beautifully done, it is just an empty shell without valuable content that reads well. A good website design has both – great website design and great content. Going only one of those paths will not produce the effects you’re hoping for to reach first pages in search engines results. Having that in mind, make sure all your pages and posts have unique, original content that makes them worth visiting!
Contact Us for an in-depth and no-obligation consultation on what exactly we can do for you with our Website Design, SEO Services, and Digital Marketing campaigns.
